This the first post on Dawn Blitz; I’ll do a second at the conclusion of the exercises, or if something really interesting comes up. – KM I made a conscious decision to not attend Dawn Blitz 2013. I’ve covered a U.S. – Japanese exercise at Camp Pendleton before, and I had been frustrated by the...

From the Japanese weekly magazine “Shukan Bunshun“; February 21, 2013; By Satoshi Tomizaka. Translation by a JSW/ASW pal. (Regarding this incident here.) Who is responsible for the Chinese Navy’s radiation of Fire Control Radar (FCR)? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs broke their silence on 8 February and released a statement in countering Japan’s accusation...

Last week a Chinese Jiangwei-II (Type 053H3) class frigate locked its fire control radar on a Japanese destroyer. The name of the Chinese frigate was not mentioned, but the Japanese destroyer involved in the incident was JS Yudachi (DD-103), of the Murasame class. After being lit up by the Chinese radar, Yudachi took evasive action....

There have been three notable pieces of news regarding SDF deployments in the past week: Tornado Relief A tornado struck the city of Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, as well as other locations in Ibaraki and Tochigi on Sunday May 6th, damaging around 2000 buildings with surprisingly only one death (a 14 year old boy) and over...

Three MSDF destroyers visited the Vietnamese port of Haiphong Sunday, starting a visit expected to last through Friday. They are the destroyers JS Hamagiru (sic), JS Sawayuki and JS Asayuki, led by Colonel Tomoo Mizukami, commander of the Japanese Navy’s 15th fleet of Escort Ships. Colonel Mizukami and the ships’ officers paid courtesy visits to...